Teachers' Resources

Use this task to develop the children’s awareness of these little critters and the great job they do in keeping our ecosystem going: pollinating flowers and crops, aerating and nourishing the soil, providing food for other wildlife and generally maintaining the balance of nature. It also introduces the children to bugs and insects in a non-threatening manner.

Things To do
1.    Find little monsters! Download the Little Monsters worksheet below and bring the children out to the school grounds or local park and ask them to find (but not touch!) the insects and bugs on the sheet.

Things To do
1.    A nature ramble to the local park to collect different types of leaves and see if the children can match them to the Leaf Hunt worksheet below or if this not possible bring in some leaves and see if the children can match them.
2.    Repeat this exercise in all four seasons and explain the differences in the colours and shapes
3.    Take part in National Tree Week and plant a tree in the school grounds.

To help achieve this ambition, the UK Government sets out several key reforms which include a commitment to removing challenges and increasing teachers' and schools' abilities to teach outdoors. It is within this context that Natural England undertook the following three pieces of research which explore different aspects relating to outdoor education.

There were three churches which belonged to religious orders: The Black Abbey was part of the Dominican Priory. Besides the church which you can see today, there were lots of other buildings where the priests and lay brothers lived and worked. It also owned some land and had a mill on the river Bregagh. It lay outside the walls of Kilkenny, but was connected to the rest of Kilkenny by a gate. St. Francis Abbey was a Franciscan Friary. Part of its church can be seen from the main gate of Smithwick’s Brewery. This is only part of the original church and there were other buildings, now gone.

Franciscans and Dominicans were known as Mendicant Orders. A mendicant is someone who begs. The mendicant orders were founded to preach the gospel and to serve the poor. Instead of living off the produce of land which they owned, the Mendicant Orders got much of their income from the ordinary people. St. John’s Priory was an Augustinian priory. It was also the Parish Church of St. John’s Parish on the east bank of the River Nore.

Download the information sheets below to find out more about Kilkenny’s Medieval churches.

Download the resources below to explore the history, science and geography relating to Kilkenny’s water.

Things To do
1.    Download the High Cross worksheet below and ask the children to design their own high cross, maybe using symbols that are in use today.

Things To do
1.    Grow Celtic Cress (this will take about 4-5 days).

What you will need:
1.    Cress seeds, paper towels and a flat plate.

What to do:
1.    Download the Celtic Cress worksheet below and cut out the first initial of the student’s name.
2.    Wet some towels until they are soaking.
3.    Lay the letter shape onto the towels.
4.    Sprinkle lots of cress seeds in the letter shape. Make sure you cover the whole of the letter shape. Press the seeds down gently.
5.    Lift the letter shape, leaving the seed shapes. Place the plate in a warm sunny spot.
6.    Use a spoon to water around the letter shapes every day. Don’t put water on the seeds.
7.    Watch them grow (around 4-5 days). When the cress is as long as your finger, cut it off and eat it!

Things To do
1.    Download the Flower Parts worksheet below and name the parts of a flower.
2.    Grow a plant from seed (this will take about 2 - 3 weeks).

What you will need:
1.    A clean glass jar, paper napkins

What to do:
1.    Rinse the jar in cold water. Empty it out - but do not dry it.
2.    Fold a paper napkin in half, curl it into a circle and slip it inside the jar.
3.    Press the napkin against the side of the jar (let it soak up the remaining water residue).
4.    Peel back part of the napkin and push three seeds (broad bean seeds are good for this) evenly spaced around the inside of the glass jar.
5.    Wet the napkins with lots of water.
6.    Put the jar in a bright warm place (the windowsill is perfect!).
7.    Add water often to keep the napkins wet.
8.    The roots will start to grown first and then the shoots.

Things To do
1.    Download the Famous Buildings worksheet below and ask the children to name the buildings in the pictures.
2.    If possible, take pictures of local landmarks and do a mini 'show-and-tell' about the buildings.
3.    Ask the children to draw a picture of a local landmark and do a mini 'show-and-tell'.

This project was developed in partnership with the Kilkenny County Childcare Committee, Kilkenny Education Centre, Dig-it-Kids, and with co-funding from the Heritage Council.

This plant grows commonly in lawns and fields. Early in the year only its leaves are obvious. These are described as trefoil leaves - three leaflets from one stem. These trefoil leaves are easy to find and to recognise. Each leaflet is heart shaped with a pale V-shaped mark. The Irish word for clover is seamair. In spring when there are no flowers out yet, the leaves are young clover - seamair óg or shamrock.

There is a tradition that St Patrick used the leaf of the shamrock to illustrate his teachings about the Holy Trinity to the Irish people long ago. Just as there were three leaflets united in one leaf of the shamrock - so were the three deities of the holy trinity united as one God. To commemorate this, Irish people wear a bunch of shamrock in their lapels on March 17th - St Patrick’s Day.

The plant begins to flower in April and there are white clover flowers all summer long until the end of September. The white clover flower head is actually a cluster of small individual flower heads. The flowers can be visited by honey bees who gather the nectar to make particularly delicious clover honey. As the clover is a member of the pea family, its seeds are carried in pods.

Clover was planted by farmers in their pastures to improve the fertility of the soil. Plants need nitrogen in order to grow and usually, to get a good crop, the farmer must add nitrogen as a fertiliser to the soil. All members of the pea family - including the clovers - are able to take in the nitrogen from the air and use it to grow. They are able to fix nitrogen in this way because they have special nodules on their roots. These nodules are formed because the plant can form an association with a particular type of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and together the plant and bacteria work in a symbiotic relationship to fix nitrogen from the air. Thus, in the days before farmers had large quantities of cattle slurry to restore the nitrogen levels in their soil, they were very glad to plant clover and let it improve the nutrient quality of their soil.

Things to do with Senior Infants
1.    Around St Patrick’s Day, the class can be brought out to collect shamrock from the school lawn or field. They can be told about the tradition of St Patrick and the shamrock.
2.    In May or June the class can go out to look for clover in flower. White clover has obvious white flower heads. Pupils may also find red clover which has purple flowers which are larger than those of the white clover. They may also find small yellow clover flowers. These belong to a different species - yellow clover - which grows in the drier parts of grassland areas.

Skills and concepts development:
Children should be able to:

1. Time and Chronology:

• Describe events as before/after/, later/earlier
• Use a simple timeline
• Use dates such as 1681

2. Change and continuity:

• Recognise how the castle has changed at different periods
• Identify features that have remained the same

3. Cause and effect:

• Recognise the link between the site of the castle and the need for the lord and soldiers to defend themselves in the early centuries of the castle.
• The importance of displaying a coat of arms for a family.
• Recognising how people’s needs change and the impact that has on a building, for example the moat being filled in and the change in the design of the windows.

4. Using evidence:

• Visiting and examining the building

5. Empathy:

• Imagine and discuss the feelings of the servants working in the castle.

Methodologies:
Among the methods which may be used are:

• Story lesson about the Butler family
• Comparing a modern photo of the entrance to Kilkenny Castle with an 18th century
• painting
• Exploring the environment, using the trail
• Integration with other subjects: geography (limestone), art (designing coats of arms), maths (shape)

Sources Used:

• John Bradley, Kilkenny, historic town atlas no. 10 (Dublin, 2000)
• John Bradley, Discover Kilkenny (Dublin, 2000)
• Katherine Lanigan and Gerald Taylor (eds) Kilkenny, its architecture and history (Kilkenny, 1977)
• William Neely, Kilkenny, an urban history, 1391-1843 (Belfast, 1989)
• William Carrigan The History and antiquities of the diocese of Ossory (Dublin, 1905)
• David Edwards, The Ormond lordship in County Kilkenny 1515-1642 (Dublin, 2003)
• Oral testimony of Castle Park constable, Liam Burke (3/08/2007)

Woodlice feed on dead plant material such as dead leaves, rotten wood and dead plant roots. They play a very important role in the food chain as the nutrients locked in the plants are broken down and released by their activities. This is why they are so abundant in the leaf litter at the bottom of a hedge or in woodland. They in turn are part of the food chain, being eaten by spiders, pygmy shrews, hedgehogs and any bird sharp-eyed enough to see them. We have over 20 different species of woodlouse in Ireland — one called the pill bug is able to roll itself into a sphere when disturbed and this helps it to evade capture.

Things to do
1.    Do woodlice prefer light or darkness?
Get a shoebox. Have half the box covered with a lid. Put six of the woodlice into this box. Have a second similar shoebox with no lid as a control to show that you are doing a fair test, and put the other six in there. Come back later and observe where the woodlice are. They will all be in the shady side of the box.
2.    Do woodlice prefer damp or dry?
You can set up a similar experiment with the two boxes only this time no lids on either but a damp sponge in one section of one of the boxes and a dry sponge in a different section. Put two dry sponges in the second box. Put six woodlice in each and observe what happens. Are there more woodlice at the damp sponge than at the dry sponge?